Paper Thin
by cheese on Toast
Summary: The paper was thinning again.


(Sadly, I don't own Naruto.)

_the paper was thinning Again._

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"The paper is thinning again."

The rain slides down from the sky, pounding quickly against the hard pavement, each drop hitting the ground with sharp, piercing sounds. It slides down long, undone curtains of hair that have curled up at the ends, a wilted flower perched clumsily through the thick locks.

"Then come inside, yeah," a voice behind her murmurs, and she acknowledges his presence by slightly moving her head, but she doesn't turn around. "Wouldn't it be better that way?"

She lifts her hand, staring down at her skin from beneath the long sleeve of her cloak. The pale white is stretched thin around her bones, drawn tightly so that every curve of her hands shows, but in a more displeasing manner then the normal gentle, sinful grace that they move in. An unreadable, difficult expression on her face, her head tilts back up to the sky, black eyes staring out from heavily-lidded eyes, letting her hand drop and swing back dolefully to her side.

"No." her voice is dark and solemn, the rain splashing down over her body, drenching her cloak and her hair so that they stick to her tightly.

Behind her, he raises an eyebrow. "What, so, you're like, a downright idiot now, yeah?" he inquires, leaning against a tree, his arms crossed over his chest. He moves his head slightly to brush blonde hair out of his eye, which bores into her back. "Come on, Konan, I knew you were stupid sometimes, but I didn't think you were _this _dense."

"Oh, so, I am dense now?"

"Well, what else do you call someone who's got your powers standing out in the rain and refusing to move with that kind of look on their face, yeah?" he shoots at her, narrowing his eye. "What, is your heart as fragile as your skin now? Did Paine say something to you? Was Itachi being a self-centered weirdo again? Zetsu threaten to eat you? Something like that, yeah?"

She shakes her head, scattering droplets of water, and the long, light blue strands fly back and get him straight in the eye with an enormous amount of water. He lets out a yelp, taking a few steps back, rubbing his eye.

"Hey, don't do that, I need that other eye, yeah. I was just asking a question, you know."

"Well, don't."

"Mm." he looks up, lowering his hand, turning back to look at her again. "_I _know that something's up. _You _know that something's up. Come on, add two and two together, yeah."

"It makes four."

At this, he lets out a shot of exasperated laughter. "Come on, do you always have to be so…..so _serious, _yeah? Never had a fun moment in your life?"

"My life was never _fun,_ Deidara." she turns to face him, blinking at him with her expressionless eyes, the rain running down her pale face. He blinks at her, raising an eyebrow, completely unfazed by the zombie-like look upon her countenance. "Surely, I thought that you knew this by now."

"So what? I'm dense, we're all dense, yeah, but, right now, you're being more dense then all of us combined. Permit me saying it, Konan, but you're acting more dense then even _Tobi._"

Her eyes narrow, but she doesn't move, her feet planted firmly into the ground. She digs her heels back into the soft, muddy dirt, shoving her hands deeply into the pockets her cloak.

"Just because I'm less expressive then your artistic, worthless personality doesn't mean that you have to prosecute me for it." she says, and he widens his eye at her. "If I want to keep my emotions inside and prevent myself happily from being the explosive idiot you are, respect me and my decisions."

"Now, I normally would, yeah, except when I'm concerned." he shrugs simply at her words, quickly regaining his old look. "I wanna know what's wrong, yeah."

"I don't feel like telling you." she turns back away from him, hiding her trembling heart.

"Don't feel like telling me _now, _or _at all?"_ he then asks, grinning softly, and her eyes narrow again. He always knew how to get to her, which was odd. Normally, she could keep herself so protected, so locked up inside, but when he spoke, it was as if all of her emotions came spilling forth and lingered on destroying her heavily-laid masks.

He liked to do things like that, she thinks, staring out at the misted sky. He liked to taunt her with his simple words that he always used, and even if they were just so simple to him, to her, they penetrated her skin like scissors, leaving tears in her like nothing else could. But still, she'd already told herself that she'd never tell him anything.

She was a wall. A large, thick, brick wall, and she had told herself, long ago, that she would remain like this until the day someone managed to kill her tormented soul. She was a wall. She blocked out everything- even kind words that people had tried to use on her. She made sure that she blocked them, and everything else, all out, so that nothing could get into her heart and tear it even more.

She'd always been alone. No matter what. Even when she had people around her who cared about her, she, with her experiences of what just had to be one of the worst childhoods ever, knew that, in the end, they'd just disappear and leave her.

That had happened, too. With a lot of people. They all came into her life wonderfully, held her hand and helped her, made her smile, and then, just when everything seemed all nice and fine, they left. They went away. They ripped out her heart and then tried to put it back clumsily into her chest. They all left her to bleed, left her on an empty floor in an empty room in an empty house in an empty world, left her all alone.

She even watched her friends begin to fade before her eyes. She could tell. She just could. It was a thing.

She watched their power grow, and their own, and then she watched them fall, and she watched just one of them pick themselves up. But when he did, and she had known him for a very, very, very long time, he just wasn't the same anymore. When she looked into those eyes, she knew that he was different. Even if she had known those eyes for a while, that spiral texture so familiar to her, there was just something so different about them now.

It felt as if he had been one of the ones to leave her, too. He had taken her bleeding organ into his hand and torn it apart with the words that he had spoken to her, and then, clumsily, he repaired it with fake promises and companionship and gently placed it back into her chest, letting it beat, broken and hating and torn.

But she lived with it. She had to. She managed. It all began to become second nature to her, and she just began to manage with it all. She followed him willingly, and sometimes, if she caught him in the right mood, she could voice her opinions and he would listen to her. Sometimes, he'd even talk to her, just like he used to, and she'd smile.

It was rare that she smiled now. And if she did, it was a queer smile, a weird smile, a sadistic, forlorn, tragic smile.

And those moments in which he talked to her, she knew that they were fake. Like the way those little flowers outside her window, in the very early beginning of March, would spring up gently from the soft ground beneath them, and she'd watch them with tearful eyes, wanting to rip them apart and throw them away so horribly. It was a false spring that they had felt, and soon, they'd die and go away, and it'd feel like something else had left her again.

But she was used to leaving. Her torn, abused heart had healed over. Even so, though, those little flowers with their placid minds and their sweet thoughts of colors and pigments and shades that came up, so believing that it was there time to come out and sprout, ripped her apart.

So, she went on, living her life, living in her mess of broken dreams and riddled perfection and sad hopes. She went on living. Her desperateness still lived on in one of the fragments of her heart, waiting, watching, yearning, despite her feelings that, even if she found someone, they'd just wind up leaving her again.

That was where _he _came in. He was a couple years younger then she was, yes, but that didn't stop him from getting right into her face sometimes and shouting at her, which she found shocking and annoying all at the same time. Yet, he had a certain affect on her, making his words always reach at least some parts of her heart and strike her, leaving her left cold at his words, shocked to a standstill.

But she still wouldn't let up her wall, even for him. She still wouldn't. She was not going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that he had gotten to her, and that she'd let him, oh, _him_ of all people, into her scarred self. So she treated him with such indifference she hurt herself even more.

She was probably just being selfish, though. Selfish, in how she was just caring about herself, not really minding how much she was hurting him if she was. She was being selfish about shielding herself, forgetting about people for once, and she had always at least taken them into slight consideration.

But he left her feeling so cold and so tormented that she just couldn't help it sometimes.

She _hates _her selfish, stupid, broken, idiotic self for that. She was everything he was telling her right now- horrible, and isolated, and just downright dense.

She hates that, too. She hates that, and her paper-thin skin with her paper-thin feelings and her too-torn, too-paper-thin heart.

"Come on."

His voice prods her away from her thoughts, and she widens her eyes for a moment, paling even harder.

"Come on, yeah. Something's up, isn't it?"

"There's nothing up." she shoots back quickly, narrowing her eyes this time, regaining herself. She gently takes her hands from her pockets, raising them up to her face again. She blinks at them from behind the light blue hair that drips into her face, watching their extremely thin, trembling texture. _Paper-thin, _she thinks, and she additionally thinks that it's just like every other part of herself.

"I'm just….it's….the paper is thinning again."

Her voice is low, and she turns around, lowering her hands, and begins to walk away from him, her heels trudging through the dirt as she walks, her footsteps squelching into the mud. His eye narrowed, he takes a step after her, a dark look crossing over his face for a moment.

_I'm just paper-thin,_ she thinks again, closing her eyes once more. Again, she raises her hands up to her trembling eyes, examining them deeply with her desperate eyes, as if trying to find a way out of her mess. But all she sees is the worn, tightly-drawn pale skin over her thin bones.

_And no matter how hard he tries, not even he can touch me. I won't let him touch me. Not my paper-thin heart. _


End file.
